Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to document scanning more specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for ad hoc transmission of scanned documents from scanners to computing devices.
Related Art
Document scanning typically requires a series of manual steps and/or user input. For example, a user may scan a document by connecting his/her computer system to a scanner, placing the document in the scanner, selecting an option to initiating a scan from the computer system, and receiving a scanned document from the scanner on the computer system. As a result, the user may find document scanning to be a time-consuming, complicated, and/or tedious process.
Alternatively, a user may perform document scanning within an Information Technology (IT) infrastructure by providing an email address and/or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server to a multifunction printer performing the scanning After the document is scanned, the multifunction printer may interface with a directory service to determine the network resource corresponding to the email address and/or FTP server. Once the network resource is located, the multifunction printer may transmit the scanned document to the network resource. Such network-based transmission of scanned documents may simplify receipt of the scanned documents but may not be available to organizations and/or individuals that do not have access to such IT infrastructures.
Hence, what is needed is a mechanism for facilitating the transmission of scanned documents to recipients in the absence of a managed IT infrastructure.